


Be as You've Always Been

by wyrmy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: But very low-key, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Gender Dysphoria, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Secret Relationship, a lot of it, a very small amount, gabriel is a slimy dickhead, possibly very bad advice on how to look after curly hair, the benefits of a good nap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29065380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrmy/pseuds/wyrmy
Summary: “Hello, Crowley,” comes the unfamiliar voice over the line. “It’s, um, me. Do you think you could come by?”“Sure, angel. See you soon,” says Crowley, manifesting himself a jacket.He has no time to waste.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 65





	Be as You've Always Been

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for mentions of non-consensual body modification, not in a horror way, but in a magical transformation way, and for it being implied that Gabriel is a little bit of a creep.
> 
> I told myself i should never post this, because i was and am concerned about being insensitive in handling heavier topics. but i do actually like it, so here it is. I am not a cis person myself, being somewhere on the transmasculine spectrum, and having very similar experiences to some of the ones described in the fic. Despite that, i recognize that i am not infallible, and so a welcome any criticism or feedback that other trans people may have for me.  
> i also welcome any advice on the verisimilitude of the hair-care bit. my hair is very short and i really dont know what im talking about in that section.

“Hello, Crowley,” comes the unfamiliar voice over the line. “It’s, um, me. Do you think you could come by?”

“Sure, angel. See you soon,” says Crowley, manifesting himself a jacket.

“See you soon,” says Aziraphale.

When Crowley arrives at the shop, he isn’t surprised to find it deserted, its guardian angel presumably cloistered in the flat upstairs. The top of the staircase gives a view of most of the kitchen, and he pauses there for just a second to take in the sight of his husband. Aziraphale is sitting on the counter next to an open window, a lit cigarette in one hand. He is wearing a horrible old tartan robe with nothing underneath, by the looks. Crowley clears his throat and Aziraphale turns to look at him, smiling.

“Hello my dear,” he says. “I er-”

“I gathered from the phone call. Your voice sounded, you know…”

“Of course. Frightfully uncanny, I don’t mind telling you, hearing that coming out of my own mouth.” He shifts nervously on the counter, the cigarette making a wobbly arc of smoke in the air as he moves his arm. “Hm. Gabriel has some politician I’m meant to influence at a party or something, and he’s convinced the man will only be influenced by a woman. Make of that what you will.”

“Sounds like a real tosser.”

“Quite. Shall I put the kettle on? Sorry about my state of dress, but none of my clothes fit like this and I absolutely refuse to wear a dress when I’m not actually required to.” He hops off the counter.

“It’s okay. How are you?”

“Wretched. I only just got back. The job’s tonight and the Lord only knows when they’ll get around to fixing it.”

“They’re not letting you change back on your own?”

“Not since that time in ’63, remember?” his turns from filling the kettle to light the stove. “I changed back before the blessing and Gabriel was spitting with rage. Said I had to go back and erase the poor chap’s memory, do the whole thing again.”

“Did I ever tell you I hate your boss?”

Aziraphale laughs. “A few times yes.” 

Crowley and his angel smile at each other for about half a minute, listening to the water in the kettle. It’s been three weeks since they saw each other last.

“Be a dear and fetch down the bikkies from the top shelf, would you? I’m not as tall as I used to be.”

Aziraphale doesn’t eat this sort of biscuit as a rule, cheap and sugary and wrapped in plastic, but neither does he chain-smoke and there are quite a lot of fag-ends in the ashtray on the table. Crowley does as he is bid, and fiddles around plating them, arranging them in different geometric shapes, and then stacking them, so that he has something to do while Aziraphale is busy fussing over the tea. 

“I’m ever so glad you came this afternoon,” says Aziraphale when the pair of them are seated across from each other at the table. He watches himself stub out his cigarette, two lines deepening between his eyebrows. “I’ve been going spare, stuck here on my own. Had to take the bus back, after, with my shirt all… gaping. Had to spend a fair few a miracles just to make sure no-one saw. It hit me for six, rather.”

Crowley drinks some of his tea. He does not look up at Aziraphale when he extends a hand out over the table. Aziraphale takes it. After a moment has passed, Aziraphale lights up again, digging a cigarette case and a matchbook out of the recesses of his ugly robe.

“Let me at least fix your hair for you.”

“Oh I thought you’d never ask. I tried to do it myself but I think I made it worse.”

“S’not easy to care for, hair like yours.” Crowley gets up and moves around the table, already eyeing up the nearly waist-length curls Gabriel has foisted upon Aziraphale. “But you’re especially bad at it. You have a talent for making rat’s nests, Angel.”

“You won’t look, will you?” says Aziraphale, laying a hand across his chest to squash it flat and using the other to pull his robe tighter around himself. 

“I promise you, I have no interest in looking down the front of your robe.”

“You don’t find them attractive.” Crowley hears, but cannot see, the curl of Aziraphale’s upper lip, the wrinkle across the bridge of his funny nose.

“You’re my husband, so I’m always going to find you a little bit attractive, but I think you look much, much better with a flat chest.”

“Oh good. I’ve been worrying,” he says.

Aziraphale’s hair is a matted mess, as curly hair can easily get when it’s not tended to or corralled at all. He cards his hands through it experimentally, pulling out bobby pins as he goes, wincing because Aziraphale yelps a little when it tugs. He wants to say: it’s going to hurt, but it needs to. Who knows that better than Aziraphale?

Crowley wets his fingers under the tap and flicks Aziraphale’s head with drops of water, bringing down the static, and gets to work on a big mat. The kitchen is warm despite the rain outside and the creeping chill from the still-open window, and silent. When Aziraphale finishes his cigarette, he doesn’t light a new one, and he sips contemplatively at his tea, or else nibbles on a biscuit, the muscles in his shoulders loosening slowly under Crowley’s care. I love you, say his fingers to the hair they tug at. I love you. It’s not something they say to each other much. He doesn’t think he’s spoken it out loud under this roof, in fact. He pulls out the last of the knots, and starts running his hands down the hair, getting it to lie properly for what he’s going to do next. Crowley starts to pull Aziraphale’s hair into position, lock by lock, angling it so that it will lie well, twists, tugs, pins. He scoops up the stray hairs and gets them in as well, because he knows how irritating Aziraphale finds them. He’s made a very plain and at least somewhat masculine bun, which will keep Aziraphale from getting jittery about having his face tickled, if it can’t imitate short hair. Crowley gives him a kiss on the temple to let him know he’s finished.

“You called me your husband, earlier.”

“Uh, yeah, it’s, ehhh, I’ve been… it just slipped out. Sorry.”

Aziraphale takes his hand and strokes it. “I’ll have to get a ring for you, won’t I? I’ll have to propose someday, when I get the chance.”

“Oh,” is all that Crowley can say.

Aziraphale frowns up at him, still stroking his thumb over Crowley’s knuckles. “I’d be honoured to be your husband, if you’d have me. I love you very much, my darling.”

“I love you too.”

“Will you stay, for a little while? Not to do anything-”

“-I wouldn’t dream of suggesting it-”

“-but just to, to be together.”

Aziraphale can’t ask for a cuddle, especially not when his body’s been modified this way. He retreats a bit further beyond Crowley’s reach when this has been done to him and is correspondingly less trusting. It hurt, at first, early in their relationship, but Crowley knows now that Aziraphale’s constant anxiety is not a reflection on him. 

“Come on, then,” he says and they go to the bedroom together. Crowley marvels at the sheer quantity of mess, from the chairs heaped with books to the mysterious and terrible pile of his own clothes, which Aziraphale never cleans up, no matter how unsightly it gets. The curtains are closed and remain so; the room is as dark now as it is at midnight. Crowley climbs into the bed and wriggles about to get comfortable. 

“I’m setting an alarm,” says Aziraphale, sitting against the headboard behind him. “I may need some help sorting my clothes and so on before I go if I want to be presentable.”

“You’ve got something to wear?”

“If you can manifest something, I will.”

“Doing Heaven’s work while dressed in the devil’s livery. You’re bold.”

“You make me so.”

He jumps slightly when he feels Aziraphale’s unexpected new shape press up against his back in the dark. He should have expected it, since Aziraphale feels the need to take the more masculine role under these circumstances, and Crowley lets him because it’s what he needs.

“It’s fine, it’s just different. I don’t mind.”

“So sorry I ought to have asked, is this alright,” they say simultaneously.

Aziraphale slings an arm over him. “Thank you for all of this,” he says. “Sometimes I really don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Anytime at all, angel. It’s my pleasure.”

There is a kiss on the back of his neck. Then,

“How do you manage this, when you have to do it?”

“Well it doesn’t happen very much anymore. I managed to convince them that I’m not very good at being a, wossname, temptress. They always want me to be some kind of hyperfeminine sexy sex-object. I can’t even wear high heels because they make me fall over. Bad ankles. Anyway, I just think of it as, sssort of, drag, you know? Playing a role. Try to have fun with it. Be the straightest straight woman on the surface of the planet for a night, then come home and be a man again.”

“I’ll try to think about it that way,” Aziraphale sighs. He sounds profoundly tired. Crowley takes the time to examine the arm in front of him. It’s thinner than the one he’s used to, or perhaps finer-boned, rather. He makes a little surprised sound when he registers that it is considerably balder, as well.

“What is it, dear?”

“Oh it’s just- he’s taken your arm hair.”

“All my body hair, actually. I rather think he fancies the idea of me in lacy underthings.”

“Well so do I, to be fair.”

“Not like that, dear heart. As a woman.”

“Perv.”

“For all that he’s constantly going on about how angels aren’t meant to be attached to a human gender, he really is quite a Man.”

“I’m going to await the reappearance of this arm hair like the birds wait the flowers of spring.”

“He’s got it all in a little golden box in his office drawer. You have to go up to Heaven for me and retrieve my arm hairs if you ever want to see them again,” says Aziraphale, rambling as he approaches sleep, “my brave hero. You’ll do it for me, won’t you, just so you can see it again.”

“I’d do anything.” He can feel Aziraphale smiling against the back of his neck, and he can feel it relaxing as Aziraphale drifts off to sleep. 

He learned how to sleep for me, thinks Crowley. Not long after, safe in his husband’s arms, he does the same.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! my job is calming down so there's more of my stuff on the way! (hopefully)


End file.
